Pinnacle from the high altarpiece from Santa Croce, Florence; companion panels are in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz (cat. no. 1635 A-E); the National Gallery, London (1188, 1189, 3376-3378, 3473, 4191); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (49.17.40); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1975.1.7)

Prophet Daniel

Pinnacle from the high altarpiece from Santa Croce, Florence; companion panels are in the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz (cat. no. 1635 A-E); the National Gallery, London (1188, 1189, 3376-3378, 3473, 4191); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (49.17.40); and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1975.1.7)

Enter a comma-separated list of keywords or phrases that best describe this object to make it more accessible during searches. Please check your spelling.

Label:Pinnacles, or upper sections of large altarpieces, often show Old Testament prophets, whom later Christian writers interpreted as foretelling Christ's coming. This was part of the pinnacle of the high altarpiece of the church of Santa Croce in Florence. The Latin inscription on the scroll is derived from Daniel 2:45 and translates, "stone was cut out of the mountain without hands."

Explore the Collections

Italian Paintings 1250-1450

The three-quarter-length figure of the young prophet Daniel, attired in a loose red robe over a green garment, wears a white pyramidal hat. Looking down to the left, he holds a scroll inscribed with a passage taken from the book of his prophecies in which he interprets a dream of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, as a vision of the coming of a Messianic age. Christian writers would later understand this as a divination of the birth of Christ.

The painting was a pinnacle panel of the Santa Croce altarpiece, which was taken to England, probably by William Young Ottley, in the last decade of the eighteenth century. After the sale of Ottley's collection in 1847, the various panels were dispersed and some lost. Those that have been located are in collections in London, Berlin, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as Philadelphia (see Reconstruction (from Bomford et al. 1989) of Ugolino di Nerio's Santa Croce altarpiece, showing the surviving fragments: Companion panels A-V). A drawing executed for the French art writer Jean-Baptiste Séroux d'Agincourt (see Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 9847, folios 91 verso-92 recto) the decade before its purchase by Ottley shows that the altarpiece was already in poor condition. The drawing, found by Henri Loyrette in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in 1978, seems to reproduce the altarpiece's original appearance faithfully. Dillian Gordon's technical researches of 1984 (see Reconstruction (from Bomford et al. 1989) of Ugolino di Nerio's Santa Croce altarpiece, showing the surviving fragments: Companion panels A-V)1 confirmed the basic accuracy of Séroux d'Agincourt's drawing, although earlier reconstructions made by Davies (1951), Gertrude Coor (1955), and Davies (1961) before the discovery of the drawing had been essentially correct. Loyrette (1978) and Christa Gardner von Teuffel (1979) also made proposals based on the drawing. In addition, three engravings of saints in the altarpiece were made by Giovanni Antonio Baccanelli in the seventeenth century.2

In Séroux d'Agincourt's drawing the prophet Daniel is not identified, but a figure in a pose similar to that of the Johnson Collection's Daniel is shown in the pinnacle on the far right. Loyrette rejected the association between the two, however, because the figure in the drawing is bearded and without a cap. But an X-radiograph of Daniel (see X-radiograph of Philadelphia Museum of Art, John G. Johnson Collection cat. 89, showing the original triangular addition and repair to the split secured by nails near the top of the panel) showed that it was executed on the same piece of vertically grained poplar as Saints Matthias and Elizabeth of Hungary(?) (see Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie, cat. 1635D) in Berlin and, therefore, definitely belonged to the altarpiece, since each of its vertical units was composed of a single plank of wood (see Drawing showing the construction of a vertical unit of the Santa Croce altarpiece (from Bomford et al. 1989)).

The main altar of Santa Croce was under the patronage of the Alamanni family until at least 1439.3 According to Vincenzo Borghini (1552-80, Lorenzoni ed. 1912, pp. 102-4), Ugolino's altarpiece bore their arms, which consisted of liste azzure on a campo bianco, or blue strips on a white field. The arms no longer exist, however, and are not visible in the drawing made for Séroux d'Agincourt.

The date of the altarpiece is uncertain, but it is often placed at about 1325 based on its relationship to Ugolino's now-lost painting once on the high altar of Santa Maria Novella, which is known to have been commissioned by Fra Barone Sassetti, who died in 1324. From an obituary in the church's necrology, it is often assumed that that altarpiece was in place before Sassetti's death, and records of payments for oil lamps to illuminate paintings in the church indicate that it may have been installed as early as 1323.4 A seventeenth-century chronicler of the convent gave the date as 1320.

There is no record of whether Ugolino painted the Santa Croce altarpiece before or after the one in Santa Maria Novella. A memorandum related to a loan he made to a fellow resident of Siena, dated May 21, 1325,5 is often cited as evidence that Ugolino had returned to Siena by this point and therefore that the Florentine altarpieces were finished. The document, however, is ambiguous; it says only that the painter-or someone on his behalf-made the loan, which means that Ugolino could well have still been in Florence.

The two polyptychs are thought to have been similar in type because of their common location on the high altars of recently built mendicant churches of comparable architecture. If any part of the Santa Maria Novella altarpiece survives, it may be the pinnacle panel depicting the prophet Isaiah in Dublin (see Dublin, National Gallery of Ireland, cat. 1112),6 as well as the Saint Peter and Saint Francis in the Misericordia of San Casciano Val di Pesa.7 While this is only conjecture, its similarity to the pinnacle panels of the Santa Croce altarpiece suggests that it came from an analogous structure. The Isaiah in Dublin would be precedent in date, because the gold is incised, not punched, and the manner more decidedly Duccesque than Ugolino's later work.

Ugolino's Daniel relates very closely to the pinnacle in an altarpiece in the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena (see Siena, Pinacoteca Nazionale, no. 47) created in Duccio's workshop. It bears many similarities to the Santa Croce polyptych both in structure, such as the pairing of the prophets in the second tier, and in details, such as the resemblance between the figures of Daniel.8 Also very close to the Johnson Daniel is the Daniel in the pinnacle in Ugolino di Nerio's early polyptych in Williamstown (see Williamstown, Massachusetts, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, no. 1962.148).9 In all three images, the prophet wears the same folded triangular cap, which was not the traditional manner of depicting the young Daniel. For example, he wears no hat in Duccio's Maestà for Santa Maria Novella.10 However, Duccio did paint the prophet with a hat on the tympanum of the tabernacle in the National Gallery in London, executed around 1310-15, possibly for Cardinal Niccolò da Prato.11 The inscription on the scroll in the latter is the same as in Ugolino's Daniel. In time the hat would become common in trecento Sienese images of the prophet.12 For example, the Vertine Master used it in the pinnacle of Daniel from a lateral panel of his altarpiece in Volterra.13 Carl Brandon Strehlke, from Italian paintings, 1250-1450, in the John G. Johnson Collection and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 430-436.

* Works in the collection are moved off view for many different reasons. Although gallery locations on the website are updated regularly, there is no guarantee that this object will be on display on the day of your visit.